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11 



JAMES O. PUTNAM 
MEMORIAL EVENING 



EXERCISES HELD BY THE 

BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
November Sixth, 1903. 



JAMES O. PUTNAM 
MEMORIAL EVENING 



EXERCISES HELD BV THE 

BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
'I 

November Sixth, 1903. 



Reprinted from \'olume Six. 
Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society. 



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PRESS UNION AND TIMES, 
BUFFALO, N. Y. 



JAMES O. PUTNAM MEMORIAL EVEXIXG. 

A meeting of the Buffalo Historical Society was held on the even- 
ing of November 6, 1903, to pay tribute to the memory of the Hon. 
James O. Putnam, who died April 24, 1903. President Langdon 
presided, and the attendance was large. The programme included 
papers by Mr. J. N. Larned and Mr. L. G. Sellstedt, with a brief ad- 
dress by Mr. William E. Foster, in which he dwelt on the scholarly 
side of Mr. Putnam's character, and related numerous anecdotes, il- 
lustrating Mr. Putnam's habits and tastes in his last years. The 
papers of Mr. Larned and Mr. Sellstedt follow. 

MR. LARNED'S TRIBUTE. 

Forty-seven years ago, in the old St. James Hall, which stood at 
the corner of Eagle and Washington streets, I listened to a speech, 
the very tones of which are distinct in my memory to this day. The 
speaker was James O. Putnam ; the occasion was a public meeting, 
called to express the indignation in this community excited by the 
dastardly assault made on Senator Sumner by Preston Brooks. 
There were other speakers, but I remember none of them ; there 
were other strong words spoken, but they left no mark upon me. 
The one speech stamped an impression on my mind that was deeper 
and more lasting than any other that belongs to that period of my 
life. I think it realized oratory to me as I had not realized it before, 
and thrilled me as eloquent speech has thrilled me very seldom in my 
experience since. As I think of it now, the scene rises like a picture 
before me : the crowded, silent audience ; the slender figure on the 
stage, all aquiver with the emotion of that impassioned hour; the 
mobile, expressive face, and the voice that came throbbing to my ears, 
with such words as these : 

Sir, what principle is contended for by the justifiers of this outrage? 
Simply this, that Northern representatives, upon questions connected with 
slavery, must speak what is agreeable to certain Southern ears. ... A South 
Carolina imprimatur must be found on the cover of every Congressional speech, 
or the stiletto and the bludgeon will punish the temerity of free men. By this 
permission we may live. Under the legs of this Carolina Colossus we may peep 
about to find ourselves dishonorable graves. If this is to be the price of union, 
it is too great. It cannot be paid. There is not forbearance enough, there is 
not fraternal charity enough, and there never ought to be, in the moral ex- 
checquer of the North, to pay any such price. . . . The committee of investi- 
gation report that the Senate has no power in the premise! . . . The skulking 
assassin may burrow under the Speaker's chair until the opportunity arrives to 
rush upon his defenseless victim. lie may shed his heart's blood before their 
senatorial eyes — and that, too, for words spoken in debate — and the Senate is 
impotent. ]f this be so, the Alpine passes in the Middle Ages and the Houns- 
low Heath of the seventeenth century were as secure as the Senate Chamber of 
the United States. 

In memory, I can listen now to the trumpeting of that last sen- 



4 JAMES O. PUTNAM 

tence in Mr. Putnam's vibrating voice, as I listened to it almost half 
a century ago, and it stirs me to my finger tips, as it stirred me then. 

Almost equally marked in my memory is the second of the early 
great speeches of Mr. Putnam on notable public occasions in Buffalo. 
It was made in May, 1858, at a union mass meeting, of Americans 
and Republicans, held to protest against the attempt in Washington 
to fasten the Lecompton Constitution upon Kansas, as the funda- 
mental law of a new State. If I could repeat, as his voice gave them, 
the opening words of that address, you would understand the won- 
derful effect with which they prepared the feeling of his audience for 
what he had to say: "On the gates of Busyrane was inscribed, on the 
first, 'Be bold,' on the second, 'Be bold, be bold, evermore be bold,' 
and on the third gate, 'Be not too bold.' The Democratic party has 
adopted all these maxims save the last." 

Those two speeches, of 1856 and 1858, were the first, I think, that 
showed the full powers of Mr. Putnam as an orator to audiences in 
his own city. He had his fame as a youthful speaker in many poli- 
tical campaigns, and had Avon even national distinction already in the 
Senate of the State of New York; but I believe I am not mistaken 
in saying that the speech on the Sumner outrage revealed him wholly 
to this city for the first time, and gave him an eminence in it which 
had not been recognized before. 

Mr. Putnam was not a native of Buffalo; his birthplace and early 
home were Attica, v/here he was born on the 4th of July, 1818. His 
father, Harvey Putnam, migrating from the East, a young man, 
newly married, had taken residence in Attica the previous year, estab- 
lishing himself in the practice of the law. As the son grew to man- 
hood he saw his father rise to eminence among the lawyers of West- 
ern New York, and became conscious that he was heir to a highly 
honored name. It was an inheritance that he valued more than 
wealth. In the State Senate once, and three times in Congress, Har- 
vey Putnam served the public, and his son, writing of him in a me- 
morial paper that was prepared for this Society in 1868, could say 
with just pride: "The elements of his personal strength in the pub- 
lic confidence were character and adequacy. To these, all the public 
trusts he held were spontaneous tributes." 

In 1838 Mr. Putnam entered Yale with high ambitions and hopes. 
Letters written by him at that time, which have been preserved, are 
all aglow with the ardent spirit of the young student, thirsting for 
pure knowledge, feasting on great thoughts, living already and joy- 
ing in the life of the mind. But the doom of ill-health, destined to 
handicap him to the end of his days, fell upon him then and drove 
him from his studies at the end of his junior year. He was never 
able to return to them ; but Yale, in later years, recognized him as a 
son who did honor to her, named him in the list of her graduates, 
and gave him his degree. 

After some months spent in travel and residence at the South, in 
1839, Mr. Putnam began the study of law with his father and was 
admitted to the bar in 1842. In that year he married and took up his 
residence in this city, entering into partnership with the late George 
R. Babcock, with whom he continued in practice for about two years ; 
but the exacting duties of a laborious profession were beyond his 
strength, and once more his ambitions were put grievously in check 



MEMORIAL [CVF.XIXG. 5 

by the inadequacy of his bocUly heahh. In 1844 lie became connected 
officially with the Attica & Buffalo and the Buffalo & Rochester rail- 
way companies, first as secretary and treasurer, and later as attorney 
and counsellor, and he held those positions until the companies in 
question were merged in that of the New York Central. Then he 
received from President Fillmore the appointment of Postmaster at 
Buffalo, and held the office until the close of Mr. Fillmore's term. 

From his youth Mr. Putnam had been interested warmly in poli- 
tics, and had attached himself with ardor to the party of the Whigs. 
While scarcely more than a boy he had been a favorite campaign 
speaker, and, in that fermenting period of our national history to 
which his early manhood belonged, he seemed to be at the threshold 
of a career that would carry him high and far in public life. With 
more stability of health, it is not to be doubted that he would have 
run such a career. As it was, he entered it, with remarkable promise, 
in 1853, when elected by his party to the Senate of the State. In that 
single term he won a reputation as wide as the nation, by the fame 
of a measure that drew attention everywhere, and the power of a 
speech that was read from end to end of the land. The measure in 
question, introduced by ^Ir. Putnam and advocated in an argument 
of masterly eloquence and force, was one requiring church property 
to be vested in trustees. It was consequent upon an issue that had 
arisen between some of the Roman Catholic congregations in this 
country and their bishops, on a ruling by the latter that every church 
estate should be made the property of the bishop of the diocese, — its 
title vested in him. Among the resisting congregations, that of St. 
Louis Church in Buffalo took a foremost place, by the firmness with 
which it asserted and maintained its rights. The controversy excited 
a deep interest in every part of the country, and nowhere more than 
here. Mr. Putnam took up the cause of his constituents in the St. 
Louis Church and championed it with characteristic vigor and zeal. 
He saw a sacred principle of liberty at stake, and he fought a battle 
for it which showed once, and once only, what his prowess in the con- 
tests of the forum might be. In the splendid speech that bore down 
all resistance to his bill he sketched his view of the issue to be settled 
by it in a few pregnant words. '"I cannot look as a legislator," he 
said, "nor would I have the State look, with indifference on a con- 
troversy like this. On the one side is priesthood, panoplied with all 
its power over the pockets and consciences of its people, armed with 
the terrible enginery of the Vatican, seeking, in open defiance of the 
policy and laws of the State, to wrest every inch of sacred ground 
from the control of the laity, — property secured by their sweat and 
sacrifices, — and to vest it in the solitary hands of a single bishop, that 
he may close the door of the sanctuary, put out the fires upon its 
altar, and scourge by his disciplinary lash, from its sacraments, or- 
dinances and worship, every communicant who dares think a thought 
independent of his spiritual master. On the other hand, we see a 
band of men who have lived long enough in their adopted country to 
have the gristle of their liberal opinions hardened into bone; men 
devoted to the church of their fathers, but who love the State to 
which they have sworn allegiance and who respect its institutions; 
we see them resisting with a heroism which would honor the age of 
heroes, unitedly, unwaveringly, in defiance of bulls of excommunica- 



6 JAMES O. PUTNAM 

tion from bishop, legate and the Pope, every attempt to override our 
laws." 

Here is eloquence, of fine texture in the warp and the woof of 
ideas and words ; but more than eloquence appears in the graver 
passages of the speech, such as that in which the attitude and the 
relations of the American Republic to the Roman Church are pro- 
nounced. "Being," he explains, "a government of dissent, and popu- 
lar in all its theory, it cannot be moulded to meet more absolute sys- 
tems of rule. It admits the transplantation to its soil of every exotic, 
spiritual or political, that can find it genial to its nature. Whether 
they are so, and can bear the transplantation, or whether they lan- 
guish and die, is of no interest to the Genius of American Democ- 
racy. Its office is spent when it has taken care that the State suffer 
no detriment, and that there spring up in its midst no hostile element 
of power." 

Writing of this speech more than twenty years ago, when a 
volume of Mr. Putnam's addresses was published. I said, and I think 
correctly, that the effect of it, "not alone in the State of New York, 
but from one end of the country to the other, was prodigious. It was 
published everywhere, read everywhere, and its author woke, like 
Byron, to find himself famous. The Church Property Bill became 
law irresistibly, and the fact that it was repealed some years after- 
wards takes nothing from the force and effect of the speech by which 
it was carried at the time. 

In all of the speeches of Mr. Putnam that touch in any way upon 
questions of public policy, movements of public opinion, or incidents 
of national history, the current of his thought has always started from 
the deep underlying principles of free government and the great pri- 
mal facts which shaped this federative nationality of ours. Whether 
speaking as a partisan upon his party platform, or standing aside 
from party, on historic anniversary occasions, he has always unveiled 
the light of past experience to turn it upon present affairs, and to pro- 
ject its forecasting rays upon things consequent and future. In that 
meaner sense of the word which prevails in our use of it now, Mr 
Putnam was never a "politician" ; but throughout his life he was a 
political student, and there are few who study politics with equal 
subtlety and depth. For this reason there was a philosophy in his 
political speeches that gave them lasting value. Those found in the 
published volume of his addresses and miscellaneous writings, such 
as the speech made in the State Senate, in 1854, against the repealing 
of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Act ; the 
speech made in this city on the Lecompton Constitution ; a speech at 
Cooper Institute, New York, on the principles of the Republican 
party; an address at Paris, in 1866, on Washington's birthday; an 
oration, here in Buffalo, on the Fourth of July, 1870; — all have their 
permanent value and can be read as instructively today as when they 
were first made public. They are none of them thoughts of the mo- 
ment on questions and excitements of the hour; they are all political 
studies, in which general convictions, mature and well determined, 
have been brought out and applied to the particular circumstances of 
the time. 

To these qualities of depth and strength in the thought of his dis- 
courses Mr. Putnam added the special gifts of the orator, in a sin- 



MEMORIAL EVENING. 7 

gular degree. He was born an orator, in the higher sense of that 
term, which implies something more than a man of fluent and stirring 
speech. It implies the gift of a sympathetic understanding of the 
hearts of men ; the gift of an imagination that is winged and plumed 
for the upper ether; the gift of a temperament which kindles to 
glowing heat in fervent times, and flashes out its warmth on colder 
souls. With all these gifts Mr. Putnam was born. Naturally, for 
half a century, he was the one man among us whose voice the people 
of this city desired most and expected to hear, when deep feelings 
were to be expressed or matters of grave moment to be discussed. 
He was called upon continually for that service of expression on be- 
half of his fellow-citizens, when new institutions were hopefully un- 
dertaken or were happily opened to use ; when important anniver- 
saries were commemorated ; when hospitable words were to be 
spoken to public guests ; when a sorrowing tribute was to be paid 
to the city's nobler dead. How much of his eloquence was spent for 
us, willingly and beautifully, on occasions like those, and what dis- 
tinction it has given to the memory of them all ! 

Twice, in the years of Mr. Putnam's prime, there were long 
breaks in our enjoyment of the pleasure and the inspiration which 
his presence among us added to our lives. From 1861 to 1867 he was 
in public service as the U. S. Consul at Havre, under an appoint- 
ment from President Lincoln ; and in 1880 he was sent abroad again, 
by President Hayes, to represent our Government at the Belgian 
Court. In both instances, the best influences that work in American 
public afifairs were expressed in his selection; for he was not, as I 
said before, a politician, in any common sense of the term. To de- 
scribe him most truly in his political character I would say that he 
was of the type of the faithful citizen, whose political franchises rep- 
resent political duty to his mind, and who obeys the command of that 
duty when he interests himself in public questions and party strifes. 
He had acted with the Whig party until its dissolution, and after 
that event he had been carried by his old associations, for a short 
time, into the movement which formed the American party; but his 
convictions and his feelings were alike anti-slavery, and he soon took 
an influential part in bringing the bulk of the "Americans" into union 
with the new party of the Republicans. In this part of the country 
that union was accomplished at the great meeting, in May. 1858, of 
which I have spoken already. In i860, he was named on the Repub- 
lican ticket as one of the two presidential electors-at-large, and was 
active in the campaign. 

Then followed his official residence for six years at Havre, which 
he could not enjoy as he might otherwise have done, because it took 
him from the country and kept him among strangers through all the 
heartache of the Civil War. At that distance and with alien sur- 
roundings it was far harder than nere at home to bear the dreadful 
anxieties of the time. Among our representatives abroad he took 
the prominence that was natural to his eminent gifts, writing the ad- 
dress of American citizens in France on the death of President Lin- 
coln, and being the chosen orator of a celebration of Washington s 
birthdav, at Paris, in the year after the close of the war. 

Whi'le residing as the American Minister at Brussels he was ap- 
pointed by his Government to represent it at the International Indus- 



o JAMES O. PUTNAM 

trial Property Congress, held at Paris in 1881, to adjust rules and 
agreements concerning patents, trade-marks, and the like. He ex- 
perienced unusual pleasure in this episode of his public life. 

I have sketched but very briefly the official services which J\Ir. 
Putnam performed. They would bear dwelling upon at more length ; 
for the record of his public life is not only a most honorable one, but 
it is astonishingly full, wUen we think of it as the record of one who 
carried a heavy burden of infirmities through all his life. There are 
not many with that handicap who reach honors as high ; not many 
who achieve as much ; not many who put their fellows so much in 
their debt. For Mr. Putnam, not only in the offices he held, but al- 
ways, in the private employments of his thought and his time, was 
continually making some or all of us debtors to him, for good service 
of some sort, rendered in some manner to others than himself. 
There was little of his life or labor spent on objects of personal gain. 
When he spoke, it was to advance a cause ; when he wrote, it was 
to stir a thought or move a feeling in the public mind, or to brighten 
the memory of some good citizen who had passed from life; when 
he busied himself, it was commonly in the affairs of his church, or 
of some public institution that invoked his care. He was rarely 
without something to do, and what he did was more rarely for him- 
self. And this was so, nearly to the last days of his long life. Al- 
most to the last he resisted and overcame the infirmities of health, 
when calls for service came to him, because he could not learn to 
refuse himself, even when age and weakness required that he should. 
The great void made in this community by the ending of such a life 
is one that we shall seldom have the pain of knowing. 

Thus far, in what I have said of Mr. Putnam, I have looked only 
at the public side of his life. It presents him in his most important 
character, perhaps, but not in the character that endears him iri our 
memory most. In the public arena he was impressive, inspiring, 
magnificent, and he made a conquest of the homage of our minds ; 
in The private circle he captivated hearts and minds together, in one 
happy surrender to his infinite charm. What other personality have 
we known that could radiate in all coinpanies so instant an atmos- 
phere of social warmth? What other companion have we found 
among our neighbors whose influence was so expansive and so quick- 
ening as his? Who else could so brighten the talk of others by mag- 
netic qualities in his own? Who else has seemed so typically the so- 
cial man, — organized in all his being for human environments, for 
fellowships and friendships, for the intimate commerce of feeling and 
thought, for sympathies, for affections, for all the tender and beauti- 
ful ties that are woven together in the finer social life of mankind? 
In my memory of Mr. Putnam he is figured preeminently in that 
type, — the type of the social man. I think he illustrated it to us as 
no one else has done. His genius found expression in it. more, even, 
than in his oratory, and all his fine gifts were disclosed in it most 
finely. He found the food of his spirit in friendships and comradery. 
and he languished without them. When alone, he was easily over- 
come by depressions incident to the infirmities of his bodily health; 
but the lift was instantaneous if he came into any company of con- 
genial friends, and he rose with a strength of spirit that bore up his 
companions with himself. 



MEMORIAL EVEXIXG. 9 

These were marvelous and rare powers. The man who possessed 
them was a precious gift to the city in which he Hved ; his death 
takes a happy uplifting influence from it which can never be quite 
made good ; for no other man can ever he to Buffalo, in public serv- 
ice, in social life, in private fellowship, all that James O. Putnam has 
been. 



MR. SELLSTEDT'S OFFERING. 

I need not say that I am proud to add my mite to this occasion. 
The privilege is, indeed, precious to me, and I esteem it a great 
honor. 

We are here tonight to hallow the memory of one of our noblest 
citizens. His learning, eloquence, patriotism, and other civic virtues 
have been the theme of the able and discriminating address to which 
we have had the pleasure of listening, and I feel sure that could his 
spirit be cognizant of our actions he would be pleased that the friend 
who he more than once told me he regarded as Buffalo's first living 
citizen had been chosen "speaker of his living actions." 

My own meagre and imperfect tribute must needs be purely per- 
sonal. It is the overflow of a heart full of love which I have reason 
to believe was to some degree mutual. I often wondered what in me 
he found to honor with his friendship. Art it certainly was not; 
perhaps for that he cared too little ; it may have been our common 
devotion to the genius of Shakespeare; or it may have been that 
mysterious and subtle something which an old and very intelligent 
Shaker I used to know, called my soul-atmosphere. 

Although I long had known Mr. Putnam as an able and highly- 
respected member of the bar, a trusted officer of Government, a cul- 
tivated gentleman, and generally distinguished citizen, it was not till 
my admission to the Shakespeare Club of which he was a star mem- 
ber, that we became acquainted. But from that time, some thirty 
years ago, our friendship grew apace, until it ripened into an in- 
timacy which only Death could sever. But though the memory of 
our mutual relations is dear to me, I claim no preference in Mr. 
Putnam's choice of friends, for I am well aware that he had older 
and more valuable friends to whom he w-as closely bound, of some 
of whom it will be my pleasure to speak later. Besides his social 
nature, high ethical sense, fine tact, and, more than all, generous ap- 
preciation of all that was good in others made him the idol of re- 
fined society, and must have engendered many strong bonds of 
friendship of which I could have no knowledge. But while he was a 
favorite, while few social functions among his friends were deemed 
complete without his presence, I have reason to believe that his circle 
of intimates was choice rather than extensive. 

Although deep religious sentiment, seriousness, love of truth, 
hatred of hj-pocrisy and shams were the foundation of his moral 
character there was nothing of bigot in its make-up. Tolerant of the 
opinion of others, he was ever ready to admit and acknowledge the 
good in all. His natural sweetness of temper and buoyancy of spirits 
were ever ready to bring life and animation into the company unless 



10 JAMES O. PUTNAM 

oppressed with that physical suffering to which he seems to have 
been a frequent victim; but even then the stimulus of a witty allu- 
sion or a suggestion from a favorite author would cause them to ex- 
pand into the natural florescence of their abundant elasticit3^ 

I recall one pleasant instance of his never-failing, ready wit : A 
number of society people had been invited to a house-warming at the 
formal opening of the Falconwood Club, Mr. Putnam being one of 
the guests. On his way down by the steamer he lost his hat. When 
later we were assembled round the festal board he was called on for 
a speech ; he began to make excuses, alleging total lack of prepara- 
tion, unexpectedness, and so forth, to which the irrepressible Joseph 
Warren jokingly objected, declaring that this could not be true since 
he himself had written the speech for him and that he must have it 
in his pocket. Quick as thought Mr. Putnam exclaimed: "Why, I 
lost it; it was in my hat when it blew off." He then went on to ad- 
dress us, and those acquainted with his ready eloquence need not be 
told that his witty and entertaining speech in which he did not spare 
his friend Warren was greatly enjoyed by that hilarious compan}^ 

While always entertaining it was, perhaps, in our Shakespeare 
Club that our friend displayed one of his brightest sides. Ah. there 
be few left of the choice spirits which composed that harmony of 
friends. If I mention only those no longer living the list will be 
all too long: Putnam, Sprague, Rogers, Gray, Kent, Frothingham, 
Hazard, Babcock, Ranney, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Putnam, Mrs. Hazard, 
Mrs. Babcock, and Miss Wilkeson. 

Mr. Putnam's familiarity with Shakespeare included nearly all of 
his dramatic works, and his quotations were always letter-perfect. 
In the Shakespeare Club, though no beauty of the poet was missed 
or marred by his interpretation or reading, he was par excellence our 
Lear : the appreciating vigor with which he read that part was little 
short, if any, of Forrest in his best days. Unlike his friend Rogers, 
whose sense of humor could seldom be suppressed, he took Shake- 
speare seriously, loving him most in his sublime parts, or those 
v/hich indicated the profundity of his insight into human nature. 

In later j^ears he was fond of reciting Ulysses' speech to Achilles, 
in "Troilus and Cressida." Perhaps he fancied in it an adaptation to 
his own life, as I confess it fits mine, and may have meaning to others 
of advanced years with unfulfilled ambitions and lofty aims. I quote 
the passage because he loved it so : 

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, 

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, 

A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes. 

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd 

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord. 

Keeps honour bright; to have done is to hang 

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; 

For honour travels in a strait so narrow, 

\yhere one but goes abreast: Keep then the path, 

For emulation hath a thousand sons 

That one by one pursue. If you give way. 

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright. 

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by 

And leave you hindmost; 

Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank. 

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear. 



MEMORIAL EVENING. 11 

(Verrun and trampled on. 'J'hcn what they do in present, 

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours; 

For time is like a fashionable host 

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, 

And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly. 

Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, 

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek 

Remuneration for the thing it was; 

For beauty, wit, 

High bixth, vigour of bone, desert in service. 

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 

To envious and calumniating time. 

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, — 

That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, 

Though they are made and moulded of things past, 

And give to dust that is a little gilt 

More laud than gfilt o'er-dusted. 

Among the friends of Mr. Putnam with whom I was personally 
acquainted were Messrs. Fillmore, Haven, Hall, Sprague and Sher- 
man Rogers. I will not trust myself to speak of the ladies. The ap- 
parent physical delicacy of his slender figure often gave his friends 
solicitude. One instance I recall. I think it was at Mr. E. C. 
Sprague's house that some of these gentlemen met for a farewell 
gathering on the eve of his departure for Havre de Grace, where he 
had been appointed consul, that one of his friends ( ? Haven) re- 
marked after he was gone: "Dear Putnam; we shall probably never 
see him again." Yet the irony of fate willed that he should see them 
all in their graves. 

He must have had a very marked affection for ]\Ir. Haven ; at 
least he cherished his memory greatly, and I am sure from the talks 
we had in my studio that he had the highest respect for his char- 
acter and talents. I had an unfinished portrait of Mr. Haven in my 
room which he admired very much, as it was a very good likeness, 
though painted from the corpse. This he requested me to let him 
have to keep in his study while he lived. As it is no longer wanted 
for that purpose I shall be pleased to have it go to this Society. 

As one by one of his old friends disappeared into that bourn 
whence there is no returning, he naturally clung closer to those that 
remained. The unexpected death of his friend Rogers affected him 
greatly. "Sellstedt," said he one day, "if you die before me I shall 
never forgive you." His friendship for Mr. Rogers was almost pa- 
thetic, and, indeed, I think it was about evenly returned. After the 
death of his wife and the subsequent scattering of his family Mr. 
Rogers found his home desolate and often fell back on his few re- 
maining intimates to render the evenings at his home less void. He 
often invited some of them to dine and spend the evening with him. 
Mr. Putnam and Mr. Johnston were frequent guests and even I 
was sometimes of the sj^mposia. The last of these memorable occa- 
sions was the Monday of the week he left for California never to see 
his friends in Buffalo again. It was a cold winter evening when he 
sent his carriage for Mr. Putnam and myself to come and dine with 
him. Mr. Johnston was there, and a more genial set of old fellows 
would be hard to imagine. In the whist, which little deserved its 
name, that followed the excellent, but unpretending, repast, I think 
Mr. Putnam was the boyiest boy in the party, and even our host for 
the nounce forgot his grief, joining his partner in joyous^ boasting 
over their easily won victory. When we left in ]\Ir. Rogers' carriage 



12 JAMES O. PUTNAM 

he insisted on accompan3'ing us to our respective homes, and this was 
the last time I ever saw him. 

I have alluded to Mr. Putnam's lack of interest in painting. This 
I think rose in part from defective vision in his latest years; per- 
haps also his absorption in business and kindred studies had pre- 
vented his attention being called to it. I remember that while I was 
his guest in Brussels, where he had invited me to visit him when I 
was staying in Paris with my family, I proposed a visit to the art 
galleries. He had not been there before, and was much interested, 
regretting that he had neglected to visit them. Especially was he in- 
terested in the Wirtz collection, that melange of artistic vagaries so 
well calculated to cast their fearful weird over the sensitive beholder. 

But though his interest in pictorial art was limited, his love of 
poetry and the higher forms of literature was boundless. No touch 
of the poet's fancy was too fine for his exquisite sense, no shade too 
elusive to escape his sympathetic nature. As he loved Shakespeare, 
so he revelled in Spenser and Shelley, and no beauty of diction es- 
caped his critical acumen. 

At all times a delightful companion, he always brought out the 
best that was in me. May not this fine trait be one of the secrets of 
the charming conversational powers of which he was a past master? 

Mr. Putnam's last visit to my studio was on the afternoon before 
the Angel of Death touched him with his wing. He seemed tired 
and feeble, but after a slight restorative his spirits rose to their usual 
tone, and I had no reason to fear that I should never again hear the 
sound of his familiar and ever-welcome footfalls approaching my 
studio door. 

Though I think Mr. Putnam's orthodoxy would have satisfied 
even John Knox himself, at least in essentials, his broad mind could 
not be bounded within the ironclad precincts that inclose error as 
well as truth. He was a liberal thinker, willing to discuss the dif- 
ficulties which science has put in the way of that simplicity of faith 
which all regret the loss of, and which will ever trouble the intelli- 
gent believer. Immortality seemed to fill him with dread, the idea of 
living forever was associated with a never-ceasing activity, and what 
he most desired was rest. These were the promptings of a feeble 
frame which confined a glorious spirit. None knows anything of a 
future life beyond what Christ has told us ; but though he has left 
us the assurance that in his Father's house are many mansions we are 
left in ignorance of their nature. Of one thing we may be reasonably 
sure : the influence of a good life will be felt till time shall be no 
more. 

Whatever may be the nature of the life he now in glory lives, in 
the hearts of his friends his memory is immortal. 

Requiescat in Pace. 



mim 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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